


Trouble Always Comes In Fours

by Majinie



Series: Trouble Always Comes In Fours [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Established Laflams, Fluff, Herc is oblivious, Hercules-centric, Insecure Herc, It's a bit of a mess, Light Angst, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multi, Past Mullette, Polyamorous Hamilsquad, Polyamory Negotiations, Why talk about feelings if you can assume instead, Your typical Morning After fic but with four people, eventually, wherever that came from
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 01:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11613000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Majinie/pseuds/Majinie
Summary: Herc had one arm wrapped around John and Lafayette each, and now that he turned his head again, he spotted Alex fitted against John's back, face tucked into his neck, an arm wrapped around his waist and his fingertips resting somewhere on Herc's lower stomach.Any hope that maybe, he was just having detailed flashbacks of a very vivid dream was shattered by the fact that even with the sheets around them, it was obvious that none of them were wearing any clothes.Fuck.___In which Hercules wakes up in bed with his three best friends and tries very hard to evade the situation so everyone can forget about it as quickly as possible, but the trio has other plans.





	Trouble Always Comes In Fours

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to be very frank with you here, this is my first time really writing a polyamorous relationship and Herc is a lot more insecure than I'd actually personally headcanon him (shhh I'm projecting let me be, and he's kind of overwhelmed, you'll see). Plus I'm still trying to figure these characters out as I'm new to the fandom. 
> 
> That being said, I hope you still enjoy... whatever this is - and a huge thanks to ninyaaaaaaah, who let me ramble at her a lot and helped me out when I struggled with characterisation and motivation. :P
> 
> Have fun!

  
  


Hercules woke up slowly, feeling warm, unusually, but not uncomfortably so. It took him a few seconds of blissful dozing until he gathered enough awareness of his surroundings to realise the warmth came from bodies pressed up against his own. Not a bad thing to wake up to.

 _Wait_.

He blinked his eyes open, a sense of trepidation creeping into his sleep-addled mind, and breathed an almost silent groan when both his situation and the dull throb of a slight hangover came to his attention at the same time.

Of the two, he suspected the latter might be what was gonna be easier to deal with.

Curled up against his right side, with his head pillowed on Herc's shoulder, an arm thrown across his bare chest, his hair undone and half covering his face in tousled ringlets, lay John, fast asleep (unbidden, he remembered _tracing paths of freckles with his lips, uncoordinated kisses being pressed to his jaw, hands clutching at his shoulders_ ), fast asleep.

Lafayette was sprawled out on his other side, lips parted ( _a breathless whisper,_ mon coeur, _tracing fingers over lean, well-defined lines, re-discovering a body that was achingly familiar_ ), both arms wrapped around Hercules in a way that meant at least the one Herc was laying on must have lost all feeling throughout the night. One of the Frenchman's legs was thrown over both of his; his whole posture was possessive, clingy, and Herc swallowed drily because he knew exactly why that was.

He himself had one arm wrapped around John and Laf each, although now that he turned his head again, he spotted Alex ( _large dark eyes staring up at him, then squeezed shut, lips parted on a moan, back arching up from the mattress in a sensuous curve_ ) fitted against John's back, face tucked into his neck, an arm wrapped around his waist and his fingertips resting somewhere on Herc's lower stomach.

Any hope that maybe, he was just having detailed flashbacks of a very vivid dream was shattered by the fact that even with the sheets around them, it was obvious that none of them was wearing any clothes.

Fuck.

He closed his eyes again tightly, willing himself to wake up fully and get his brain into gear, but all it did was bring the memories of the previous evening back with even more clarity ( _someone kissing along his back while he was lip-locked with Lafayette, litanies of murmured words from Alex because of course he wouldn't be quiet even during this_ ). They'd gotten drunk, Herc too – not enough to not know what he was doing or to obscure his recollection of the events, no, he'd known perfectly well what he was doing, but the restraint and caution needed to _keep_ him from doing it had gone out of the window at some point around when he'd stopped thinking about Alex' hand on his thigh so hard and it had seemed perfectly natural to turn his head and kiss Lafayette, even as John was fiddling with the buttons of his shirt.

Well, he was sober now. Drunk him had apparently not realised or simply not cared that he was going to have to deal with the fallout of this later.

Herc took a deep breath, opened his eyes again and allowed himself a second to revel in the closeness, the silence, the grounding ( _and loved_ , his mind supplied, but he pushed the thought down because he had intruded enough as it was and he didn't need to do more damage here) feeling from the cuddle pile before he began to gently extricate his arm from beneath John. He stilled and held his breath when the younger man made a quiet snuffling sound and stirred before settling back down. Herc exhaled the breath he'd been holding before he managed to pull his arm out from beneath John and Alex without further incident. John's head dropped onto the pillow and he sighed, but showed no signs of waking.

Getting Lafayette to let go was going to be a lot harder. _Not as hard as explaining yourself to them later_ , an entirely unhelpful voice in his head supplied. Herc ignored it. One problem at a time.

With his newly freed arm, prickling with a feeling of pins and needles where the blood was starting to flow again, he reached down to where Lafayette's hand lay on his waist with the intention of moving it aside gently. He found himself covering it with his own for a few seconds before he could bring himself to try and free himself from Laf's grip.

“What're you doing?”

Herc's head snapped back to his other side, where Alexander had pushed himself up onto an elbow from where he'd been spooning John and was watching him, dark hair in disarray and a dark hickey on his neck just low enough to be hidden by a shirt collar. Herc didn't think he'd put it there, but he wasn't sure. Alex was looking way to alert for this time in the day.

“I –” the tailor began with something akin to guilt rolling in his stomach, looking down at Lafayette. He had never been good with words the way Alex was, but now he found they failed him completely. “Um.” Alex' dark eyes were still fixed on him with their usual, almost unsettling intensity when he glanced back up. “I thought I'd better...”

“Leave?” Alex supplied, his tone carefully neutral. So was his expression, for that matter.

Herc swallowed, keeping his voice low as he answered: “I... guess, yeah.”

He probably imagined the brief flash of hurt in Alex' expression before the other man looked down at Lafayette pointedly and then back at Herc. “And how do you plan on doing that?” he inquired, hushed and with a teasing smile playing around his lips. He seemed almost smug about the whole situation.

Herc stared down at the Frenchman, whose hold on him hadn't been relinquished in the slightest. It made his throat tighten a little – he and Laf had had _something_ not too long ago, back before Herc had noticed that his... that _Lafayette_ was falling for the other half of the “Revolutionary Set”, as Alex liked to call them. He and Laf had never really put a label to their relationship, and maybe that was one of the reasons why Herc didn't think he had any right to hold the other back when John and Alex would obviously be so good for him. Hell, the three of them were good for each other, any blind man could see that, who was he to get in the way of that?

Still, the view brought back all too fresh memories of quiet mornings spent together, just the two of them – not that he wouldn't have liked the addition of John, still close to his side, or Alex, who was still watching him attentively.

But this was _their_ thing, and now that he was sober again, he couldn't help but feel like his intrusion wasn't going to be welcomed once the others came to their senses.

The discomfort, the _helplessness_ must have shown on his face when he looked back up at Alex, because the younger man's expression softened and he leaned over John to brush his fingertips along Herc's forearm.

“Stay a little longer,” he murmured, his voice hushed to avoid disturbing the other two, his expression melting into something open and sincere.

Hercules found himself swallowing and giving a minute nod. “Yeah, alright,” he answered quietly.

Alex beamed at him. “Great!” Then, he was pulling back and slipping out from under the covers, buck-ass naked. Herc stared after him, realised it was probably not decent, averted his eyes and then decided _screw it_ and looked back just as Alex slipped into a dress shirt he'd picked up from the floor – _Herc's_ shirt, he realised after a second when he saw it slipping from the immigrant's much slighter frame.

“Where are you going?” he whispered, alarmed.

Alex, picking up his boxer briefs – not that they were really necessary, Herc's shirt almost reached his knees – threw a reassuring wink over his shoulder. “I'll be right back,” he mouthed and disappeared from the bedroom.

Herc tried not to dwell on the pang of satisfaction he got from seeing Alex in his clothes.

He sank back into the pillows after a moment, releasing some pent-up tension with a sigh, and looked down at John, whose arm had slipped from across his chest when Herc had shifted so now, his hand was splayed out on the tailor's stomach, and Lafayette was nuzzling the crook of his neck with small, barely-there movement – oh.

Herc stilled, not sure _when_ exactly he'd started tracing patterns on Laf's back with his index finger. A second later, the Frenchman went motionless as well.

They spent a second in silence before Herc muttered: “You're not asleep, are you.”

He felt Lafayette exhale against his neck, preceding his quiet response. “I'm not.” Laf turned his head slightly, pressed a kiss to Herc's collarbone. “Bonjour, mon coe–” His voice cut off abruptly in the middle of the familiar endearment. That... stung.

“You could say it last night just fine,” Hercules remarked tightly before he had taken the time to think about it and winced at himself less than a second later. “No, sorry, forget I said –”

“You were tipsy last night,” Lafayette interrupted, pushing himself up onto an elbow so he could look down at Herc, meet his eyes with an expression that was far too guarded for someone who had just woken up. “Maybe even drunk.” Laf had _never_ thought it necessary to be wary around Herc before they'd split up, and the awareness of that caused a sharp stab of guilt. “I wasn't sure you would still want to hear it now that you are... not.”

Herc opened his mouth to reply something, but thought better of it this time. He was the one who'd distanced himself so Laf could be with Alex and John because otherwise, he would have had to hear it from Lafayette himself at some point, which would have meant more grief for the four of them. So really, it wouldn't be fair to either snap at Laf now or to tell him that _yes_ , he wanted to hear it, had never stopped wanting it – he'd backed out of their relationship until it could hardly be called one anymore so Laf could be with John and Alex and he'd be damned if he took that from him now.

He broke eye contact, swallowing drily. The only sound was faint clattering from the kitchen while he and Lafayette sat in tense silence. Herc had backed off so he wouldn't get in the way of his friends' happiness and now he'd screwed it up because apparently, he hadn't managed to muster up the self control required to stay away from Laf – or any part of the trio, really, Laurens with his freckles and the smile that could light up a room and Alex' never-ceasing energy and intensity just as much as Lafayette's warm, sincere affection, expressed in actions rather than words but no less clear for it.

The longer he stayed, the worse he was going to make this for everybody, so Herc swallowed down whatever words were bubbling under the surface, couldn't really quench the stirring in his chest but tried to ignore it, and said quietly: “Look, Gil, I should just go.”

He managed to sit up almost completely before Laf's hand on his chest pushed him back onto the mattress firmly.

“Non, you don't get to _just_ _go_ , Hercules,” he stated, his accent bleeding into his voice strongly enough that the _H_ at the beginning of his name was nearly inaudible. He was damn near scowling down at Herc, who stared back up at him almost incredulously.

“Excuse me?”

“You've been avoiding us,” Alex, who was slipping into the room with a tray in his hands, stated, his voice no longer lowered carefully. There was an edge to it now, matching his narrowed eyes. “All three of us.”

“No I haven't,” Herc replied weakly, looking back and forth between the two while he tried to figure out something proper to say, something that would get him out of the corner he'd backed himself into.

John slept like the dead, face buried in his pillow. Herc envied him.

“Yes you have,” Alex replied matter-of-factly while he somehow managed to balance a tray with four mugs while climbing back onto the mattress between John and Laf. He shuffled forward, then unceremoniously straddled Herc's thighs and set the tray down on his stomach.

Herc blinked at him and then scowled. “Honestly?” he demanded, even as the smell of coffee began to fill the room.

Alex grinned at him. “I wouldn't move too much now,” he chirped. “It's pretty hot.”

“ _Really_.”

“Yeah, it's fresh. There's one for you, too. You're welcome.” Even with the chipper attitude he was sporting now, there was something determined in Alex' eyes, the kind of decisiveness which meant he wasn't getting out of this one so quickly.

Still.

“It's really better if I –”

Alex honest-to-god _tutted_ at him, reaching out to place a finger on Herc's lips. “I don't think so. We gotta talk. All four of...” He trailed off as he glanced over at John, who seemed completely unperturbed by the commotion around him, still fast asleep with his face pressed into a pillow. “Oh, for the love of... John!”

For a moment, the sense of panic he'd felt building up was overshadowed by fond amusement as Herc watched Alex lean over to poke John into the ribs to wake him, making him squirm. Then, he realised that John being awake would mean one more person he'd have to explain himself to and he did _not_ need that right now.

“Can't we just let him sleep?” he hedged, carefully.

“Yeah, exactly,” John agreed, muffled by his pillow while he squirmed closer to Herc and batted Alex' hand away. “You heard the man. Can't we just lemme sleep?”

“Non, mon petit,” Lafayette responded firmly.

Hercules dropped his head back onto the pillow and decided to resign himself to his fate. Maybe they could get this over and done with quickly – he'd do pretty much anything right now to get out of the situation his stupid drunken self had gotten him into.

He sighed in defeat when John, apparently sleepy enough to be oblivious to the tension in the air, draped an arm over his chest while taking care not to knock the tray off of Herc's stomach.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “I'm awake, you fuckin' sadist.”

Alexander's stern expression slipped for a moment as he chuckled. “I love you too,” he quipped.

John huffed against Herc's shoulder, then sighed and sat up slightly. “At least give me my coffee if you're gonna deprive me of my beauty sleep.” He sat up, supporting himself on an elbow, and reached for one of the mugs with his other hands. His hair fell over his shoulders and around his face in unruly curls and the sheet had slipped down to his waist, exposing his chest. He was a sight for sore eyes.

Well, all three of them were, really, but this didn't feel like the right time to be thinking about that. Still.

“We gotta talk,” Alex reiterated, drawing Herc's attention back to him in time to see the pointed look Alex shot him before looking back up at John, who made an “oh”-sound of realisation.

Herc closed his eyes, trying to prepare himself, but John's next words caught him off-guard nevertheless.

“Right, _do_ 's and _don't_ 's, boundaries, the whole polyam shebang –”

The startled “what?” from Hercules was drowned out by Alexander's “no, no, no, John, for fuck's sake, you're like five steps ahead of everyone here, we haven't even _propositioned_ properly yet, could you tone it down a notch?!”, accompanied by a failing hand toward John, whose mouth clicked shut before he let out a sheepish chuckle. He still seemed to take the whole situation a lot more lightly than Lafayette and Alex (or Hercules, for that matter).

“Sorry, I just assumed that since he's still here...” John paused to look down at Herc. “You're staying right? Because I really did assume, and that's probably never a good thing et cetera, but you're staying?”

Herc stared up at him like a deer caught in a speeding truck's headlights, willing his brain to catch up with the turn the conversation had taken.

“Actually,” Alex cut in before he managed to come up with a reply, “I woke up because he was trying to sneak out this morning. Hence why I'm sitting on him.”

John's expression fell from cheery and hopeful to hurt so quickly it was almost painful to watch. “What?”

Herc's attempt to raise his hands defensively was hindered by Lafayette, who was still more or less laying on one of his arms (though the sleepy relaxation from before had all but left his body several minutes ago), and John on the other side. Combined with Alex' weight pinning him down, the feeling was damn near claustrophobic, especially since the intervention-like mood wasn't doing anything to help his nerves.

That was probably why his next sentence came out a little more forcefully than he'd intended: “Could y'all just _back off_ for a second?” He could feel Alex and John both flinch and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Sorry. I promise I'm not running away or whatever, but could I have a little space to breathe, please?” He didn't give the others any chance to get a word in while they edged away (which ended up making him feel even more isolated than before, his head reeling), and didn't look up. Instead, he kept his gaze trained on his hands, twisting in his lap while he got into a cross-legged position. “I know I fucked up last night, okay, I shouldn't –”

“Herc, you...”

“Would you let me _finish_ a goddamned sentence, Alex? Thank you. I shouldn't've intruded like that, especially when y'all were drunk enough to let me, I _get that_ , alright, but if we could just let it drop instead of staging a fucking intervention, that'd be great. I'm gonna...”

“Yeah, I'm gonna stop you right there.”

“Alex–”

“I let you talk –”

“For like _one_ sentence–”

“–and now it's my turn. First of all, we didn't _let_ you do anything, hell, if anybody let anyone do anything, it was you because we got you drunk enough to _finally_ get you into bed.”

That was jarring enough to have Herc snap his head up from his hands to Alex, who was leaning forward with strands of hair hanging into his face and a flush of his cheeks that Herc classified as _angry_.

“I'm sorry, what?”

“And secondly,” the smaller man went on, undeterred, but this time Lafayette – who had been awfully quiet – was the one to cut in.

“Slow down, mon cher,” he interjected and Herc turned his head to look at the Frenchman, who was sitting about an arm's length away, the sheets pulled up just enough to be more or less decent. He caught Herc's gaze and held it, and when he spoke, it was with slow deliberation: “I think we have not made our intentions quite clear enough yet. If you truly wish to leave, mon coeur,” and there it was, “then you are of course free to do so.”

Hercules swallowed, still processing what he'd heard so far, trying to make sense of everything he'd heard so far, trying to prevent himself to get too caught up with the implications made already.

There was a shuffling sound from behind him before John added: “We'd like you to stay, though.”

Briefly, Herc twisted around to look at him – he'd scooted back to give him space on his request earlier, but looked like he was trying not to reach out, eyes fixed on him expectantly. When he glanced over at Alex, he was met with a similar expression, if a little more guarded.

“But you're...”

“In a polyamorous relationship,” Alex supplied, whatever thin thread of patience he'd managed to hold on to apparently snapping as he shuffled forwards. “You're aware of what that means, right?”

Herc scowled at him. “Of course I am.”

As if he'd said nothing, Alex went on: “Just because there's more than two of us in on this, doesn't mean that anyone loves anybody any less or that it's somehow worth any less just because we have more than one significant other.”

“I _know_ what polyamory means,” Herc insisted with a twinge of annoyance. He was more than aware of just how fond the members of the trio were of each other.

Alex nodded. “Good,” he declared. “So you're aware that Laf is polyromantic or polysexual or whatever fancy label you'd like to put on it, yes?”

Herc glanced over at the Frenchman, whose head was cocked to the side slightly, with an expression on his face Herc wasn't sure what to make of. Somewhere between inquisitive and reproachful.

“Yes?” he answered slowly, gaze flickering back to Alex, who was already opening his mouth to pick up where he'd left off, trying to reach whatever he was trying to get at, but Lafayette beat him to it.

“Then why, Hercules, would you think that just because I want John and Alexander, I do not want you anymore?” There was something lacing his voice, not quite anger, but exasperation, mingled with a note of hurt that Herc and _never_ meant to put there.

He wasn't sure what to answer, either, because this was a lot to process at this time in the morning with a hangover still dully throbbing at the edges of his mind.

“But John and Alex...”

“John and Alex,” the former cut in, “have been aggressively hitting on you for the past two months and are frankly astonished it took you so much time and so many shots to pick up on it.” Hercules turned again to squint at John, who blinked back at him with incredulity slowly creeping into his expression. “You're about to tell me you didn't notice that, either, aren't you,” he said flatly.

Herc gave him a sheepish smile. He heard more than saw Alex drop back onto the mattress with a drawn out groan of “oh my _god_ ”, followed by “I've been draping myself over you like a freaking cat during movie nights since forever!”

“I thought that was just your thing!” Herc shot back, a little distractedly because there was an almost painfully constricting pressure on his chest that was loosening and abating as the situation slowly shaped out to be... not as disastrous as he'd thought, to put it mildly. It felt a little like he could breathe freely again, like the rush of oxygen after too long without, making him lightheaded.

He heard Alex huff in indignation. “I don't just snuggle with anybody,” he protested sullenly.

John coughed. “ _Well_...”

The other man kicked at him from his lying position. “Shut it, Jack.”

“You shut it.”

“Never.”

Alex sat up, then crawled toward Herc on his hands and knees until he was on his haunches in front of the tailor, who had retreated against the headboard. He draped his arms over Herc's shoulders, rested their foreheads together so Herc had the choice of either staring at his lips or into his eyes. The latter option won out, but only barely.

“Lemme say this very clearly so nobody has any more room for misunderstandings or miscommunication or other screw-ups,” he began, breath ghosting over Hercules' lips. “We want you too, Herc.”

“Never stopped,” Lafayette added pointedly.

Herc tore his eyes away from Alexander's to look at the Frenchman. “You could have said something,” he responded, a little defensive because he knew as he said it that it really wasn't fair, but it seemed easier than processing what Alex had just told him.

Sure enough, Laf narrowed his eyes at him. “You would not let me! You shut me out, and anytime I tried to talk to you, you would distance yourself further. It wasn't like you gave me much of a chance, Hercules.”

He was obviously ready to argue his point if necessary, but Herc knew when to admit defeat, and he'd known from the beginning that he wasn't exactly in the right with this one. His gaze dropped back down to his lap.

“Guess I owe you an apology.” Lafayette's “non, mon coeur” came at the same time as John's “oh yeah” and Alex' “obviously”, prompting a half-hearted glare from the Frenchman toward the other two. Hercules cleared his throat and carefully extended a hand toward Lafayette while Alex sat back a little, though his hands stayed possessively locked behind Herc's neck. “'cause I'm starting to think I might've been a little hasty, so I'm... sorry, for what it's worth, Gil.”

Lafayette smiled at him, the warm, brilliant, toothy grin that would have anyone's knees go weak. “A lot, actually,” he replied, lifting a hand to tangle his fingers with Herc's before dropping their joint hands to the mattress.

They remained like that for a few seconds while Hercules allowed himself to actually take in the turn the conversation had taken ( _we want you too, Herc_ ), the tension slowly bleeding from his shoulders as he took a conscious, slow breath.

After a few seconds, he inquired carefully: “So... what do we do now?”

Alex huffed, drawing the tailor's attention back toward him. “Am I actually gonna have to crawl into your lap or are you gonna take a hint and kiss me?” he complained, almost whiny.

Hercules laughed quietly, which was surprisingly freeing. With a teasing grin, he leaned back against the headboard and drawled: “I don't know, why don't you try it?”

Of course, Alexander was going to take that as a challenge. He narrowed his eyes at Herc and a moment later, he found himself being kissed with the same insistence and focus Alex did everything with. It was almost dizzying.

Herc was content to let him at first, then he leaned forward slightly, placing his free hand at the smaller man's waist. Alex allowed him to take control of the kiss with a pleased little sound before he pulled away, flushed and licking his lips with a satisfied, almost smug look.

Not that Herc himself was in a much better state.

“So you're staying, yeah?” John asked from beside him, inching closer.

Herc felt Lafayette squeeze his fingers slightly and looked over at John, all tousled curls and wary, but hopeful eyes, and smiled.

“Yeah,” he answered earnestly, “I'd like that.”

Barely a second later, as if that had been what he'd been waiting for, Lafayette had closed the distance between them and was kissing him with more urgency than finesse. He'd surged forward quickly enough that their teeth clicked together painfully at first, but they figured themselves out fairly quickly, falling into a familiar, gentler pace after a few frantic first moments.

 _God_ , he'd missed this.

When they broke apart, it was with none of the frantic haste from the beginning and Herc had to force himself to open his eyes again instead of basking in the moment for even longer. Lafayette was barely inches away from him, a small smile gracing his lips, and from the corner of his eye, movement caught his attention.

He raised an eyebrow, turning his head toward Alex slightly. “What're you doing?”

Alexander, who had unbuttoned the shirt he'd stolen from Herc before and was in the process of slipping it off his shoulders, shrugged and let it fall the rest of the way down, unabashed.

“Well, the coffee's definitely gone cold by now,” he jerked his chin toward where he'd set down the tray earlier, “so we may as well use the time in bed before someone gets up to brew a new pot.”

As John reached out toward both Herc and Alex as if he couldn't decide who to get his hands on first, obviously on-board with the idea, Hercules quickly decided he couldn't agree more.

**Author's Note:**

> Congratulations, you made it this far!  
> (Hamilton seems to be able to get through my writer's block right now, so if you have requests or ideas, feel free to drop them below or at my [ tumblr! ](https://majiniesthings.tumblr.com) )


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